Jose Martos

Director, Heidelberg Project Board of Directors

Owner, Martos Gallery

Jose Martos who grew up in southern France, is in the art world, but is not quite of it. His father drove trucks, his mother cleaned houses and he dropped out of school at age 12. In the 1980s, he visited a friend in St. Barts and ended up staying for five years. He opened his first gallery there, essentially to prove he could. Martos began exhibiting local artists on the island and attracted the attention of vacationers like dealer Tony Shafrazi and artist Lawrence Weiner. He moved to New York in the ’90s, after doing a show with artist Richard Bernstein, and opened a gallery on Bethune Street. He then migrated to 515 Broadway, before arriving in Chelsea in 2007 then Chinatown in 2016, where his eponymous gallery is currently located.